-
Pacific Northwest – September 30, 2024
Ted Wright, Jazz Alley house sound engineer, explains their sound system for the PNW September 2024 meeting.
Meeting Topic: Live Sound Improvements at Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley
Speaker Name: Ted Wright — Jazz Alley house sound engineer
Meeting Location: Jazz Alley, Seattle WA
Summary
PNW Section opened its 2024-25 meeting season with a tour of the sound system at Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley in Seattle by their house engineer, Ted Wright. Since 1980, Jazz Alley has been one of the country’s premiere jazz clubs, and attendees could see the latest remodeling and upgraded sound system. About 17 persons attended in-person and 11 via Zoom, with 19 being AES members. PNW Committeeperson Jayney Wallick coordinated the event.
After opening remarks by PNW Chair Dan Mortensen, attendees all introduced themselves, and Jayney Wallick introduced Ted Wright. He described how he grew up in the PNW region and became interested in sound and learned about it.
Ted went through the venue’s hardware, a dual Yamaha CL5 mixing system, local manufacturer Symetrix processing, Dante connectivity, Lab Gruppen power amplifiers and local manufacturer McCauley Sound speakers replacing old line arrays. The speakers are mounted to a rectangular ceiling truss and were customized for this install by McCauley. Various other speakers round out the monitor wedges and satellites for this dinner club venue, which holds about 350 people.
Ted also spoke about his working with the artists and his techniques, showing piano miking options and various microphones available, as well as tips like cable covers and clear sound isolators. Questions were posed from Zoom and in-person; it turns out the 9-foot Hamburg Steinway D can be stored out of sight by putting it on its side and taking the legs off, then pulling the backdrop curtain over it.
The system was demoed with some commercial recordings while attendees walked the room. Door prize winner was Khoi Nguyen, who received a b9 stereo mic setup ruler, courtesy of Uneeda Audio.
Meeting media links will be available in the PNW Section meeting archive (note new URL);
https://pnw.aessections.org/events/meeting-archive/
